Athletics

A look at the NCAA tournament semifinal between the second-seeded Wisconsin Badgers (30-7) and eighth-seeded Kentucky Wildcats (28-10). When: Today, 5:49 p.m. TV: TBS Breakdown: Wisconsin is making its fourth Final Four appearance but first since 2000. The Badgers defeated American, Oregon, Baylor and Arizona to reach this year's final weekend. Once known primarily for defense, Wisconsin's "swing" offense has evolved. The Badgers can play multiple tempos and have won games scoring as few as 48 points (Virginia)

Imagine famous football coaches and professional athletes taking a 50% salary cut. University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban's annual salary would be a mere $3.5 million or so. Angels baseball star Albert Pujols would earn just $8 million a year. And the Lakers' Kobe Bryant would have to be satisfied with a yearly $15 million. Not by chance, if this came to pass, you the consumer would reclaim control of your rapidly rising monthly subscription TV bill. This is not just idle speculation.

University officials and the NCAA have been reluctant to acknowledge that top-tier college football programs are run these days less as athletic programs than as businesses. But a labor administrator's decision Wednesday that Northwestern University's scholarship football players are, in fact, employees with the right to unionize should get their attention. This issue has been bubbling for decades as major sports programs evolved from important but ancillary parts of a college's mission into powerful businesses enriched by multimillion-dollar TV contracts and merchandising revenue, all built on the labor of student-athletes who received no compensation beyond scholarships.

A former UCLA athletics official charged with possession of child pornography pleaded not guilty Friday, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. Michael Sondheimer, 58, was charged in February with one felony count of possessing material depicting a minor engaging in sexual conduct, prosecutors said. If convicted, he faces a maximum three years in state prison. Sondheimer graduated from UCLA in 1977 and spent at least 36 years at the university as an athletic administrator, according to a biography previously posted on the UCLA athletic department website.

Yet another nail went into the coffin of the NCAA on Wednesday. And for those who genuinely care about the well-being of college athletes, that couldn't be better news. Peter Sung Ohr, a regional National Labor Relations Board official, ruled that scholarship football players at Northwestern University aren't student-athletes, as the NCAA likes to designate them, but rather employees of the school who generate vast sums of money for the institution. Players are compensated for their work via scholarships, and are therefore entitled to unionize.

Angels 6, Athletics 2 AT THE PLATE: The Angels have won eight straight games and closed Cactus League play with a 17-10 record. Utility infield candidate Grant Green lined a two-run home run to left-center field in the seventh inning and is hitting .360 (18 for 50) with 11 runs batted in. Brennan Boesch hit a solo home run in the seventh, and Matt Long (.426) hit two sacrifice flies and a double. ON THE MOUND: C.J. Wilson looked sharp in his final tuneup, giving up one unearned run and four hits in seven innings, striking out seven and walking two. His earned-run average is 2.20 in 28 2/3 innings.

Northwestern football players qualify under federal law as employees of the university and, therefore, can legally form the nation's first college athletes' union, the National Labor Relations Board announced Wednesday. “We had both the facts and the law on our side,” Gary Kohlman, the attorney representing the players, said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg News. It's a stunning ruling, but hardly the final one on the matter. Northwestern has already announced plans to appeal the ruling by National Labor Relations Board regional director Peter Ohr to the full NLRB in Washington, D.C. After that, it probably will go through appellate courts and even the Supreme Court if necessary.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Mark Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders, has acknowledged the possibility of moving the franchise back to Los Angeles if Oakland can't get its act together on a new stadium. That's interesting. But if words translated into actions, the L.A. market would have landed an NFL team or two 15 years ago. More than half of the league's 32 teams have been linked to L.A. at one point or another, as in, Team 'X' could potentially move if it can't get a stadium deal where it is. At the league's annual meetings Monday, Davis said his patience is wearing thin over the Coliseum City project, the proposed redevelopment of the 850 acres in and around the Oakland Coliseum to create new homes for the Raiders, Athletics and Golden State Warriors.

Some girls choose soccer or cheerleading. Ivy Wolk chose roller derby. "This is it, this is for me," the petite, wide-eyed 9-year-old said to her mom the first time she saw the Los Angeles Derby Dolls hit the track, and one another, two years ago. Split lips, black eyes, rink rash and bruises are trophies here. "It's not child abuse, it's derby," she once told her mother, who made sure she alerted her daughter's pediatrician about the girl's newfound love for the sport. "There have literally been days where I have been like, 'I must be crazy.' But she just picks herself up and gets back out there," said her mother, Tracy Wolk.